Entrepreneurship has been romanticized so much. We want to be our own bosses, make our own money at our own rules, but do they tell you how long it takes you to get to the comfortable stage, the sleepless nights, the loneliness, how broke you may be for the first few years?
Hosea Kambonde is a 28 year old Software Engineer who completed high school in Swakopmund, graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Software Engineering in 2014 and is currently co-founder of iMarketing Consultants, a software engineering and internet marketing company based in Windhoek.
We speak to Hosea about his journey as an entrepreneur while he shares a few things he wishes he knew before he started.
Talk to us about iMarketing and how it came about…
iMarketing Consultants was founded in 2016, with an immediate mission of assisting businesses with internet branding solutions and a long-term vision of becoming a local powerhouse of custom developed software for local and international consumption. The company has grown remarkably over the past two years and currently employs six full-time employees and two part-time employees.
What were some of the challenges you faced?
- Changing as a person to accommodate what I slack in; as in the beginning, you have to do everything to try and save the little funds you have
- Getting the right people for the job
- Managing people and the team at large, everyone sees things differently, feels and have different views about everything and as a leader, you need to learn how to manage this.
- Giving up; there will always come a time where you want to give up or join the majority. The thing that really allows you to get up again is your reason why, why you decide to be on the journey you are on, why you are doing what ever you are doing, you need people around you that remind you about this. You also need a day where you take time off and visualize this, a day where you allow yourself to recharge and allow yourself to say thank you for what you have achieved so far
What has brought you so much joy from the process?
Growth; growing and meeting new people along the way. Challenges are what help us grow, and facing them with my team, with each having a different way of dealing with it is fascinating.
The process; I’m not about what or who I want to be one day, instead I’m about the journey that gets me there, I don’t celebrate my achievements as much as I celebrate my every day struggles in achieving whatever I want to. In short, I enjoy building the house and laying every brick and not necessarily when the house is complete, because when you do this, every brick laid will be laid to perfection.
So what are some things they don’t tell you about entrepreneurship?
You don’t need a lot of funds – starting small allows you to learn and understand the system, you can learn from small mistakes and fix them early. Mistakes that would have been big if you had started with a lot of funds. If you don’t have funds, play in the middle of the food chain until you can afford your own equipment.
It’s not about making money – focus on the service, not the money, when your service or product is useful and truly creates value for others, money will flow more consistently.
You will fail – Failure is inevitable, yet how you respond to it is what makes you, take everything that comes your way as a blessing, understand what choices you made that put you in that predicament and what you have to do to get you out of it. Learn from the experience, we need failure, it keeps us humble.
You need patience and faith – in the same way we are patient and have faith in our children to start from grade 1 – 12, paying and financing their education and nutrition, with the confidence that they’ll succeed is the same logic that needs to be applied to your business, it doesn’t happen overnight, though that’s what the media makes you believe.
Your relationships will suffer – as you embark on this journey, you will learn and see things differently as each day goes by, you will lose patience for some people, you will question why you do some things, people will challenge and make fun of you, your decisions will be questioned, but always stay true to your “why” and course, and allow yourself to let go of relationships that make you feel negative.
Practice makes perfect – Train your mind to react a certain way when faced with an issue, read to get more knowledge in what you slack in, eventually you will become a pro in succeeding.
iMarketing offers:
Custom software and website development | Corporate Internet Marketing | IT Support and Maintenance
Contact them here:
info@imarketing.com.na | +264 61 252 377
